6 ms·

IIRC Gibson stated that Neuromancer is basically "un-movieable". I love the book and the rest of the Sprawl series but man. Neuromancer is a SUPER busy book wit

• nickthegreek 4y ago
  It maybe un-movieable, but is it un-serialized-storyable? Personally, I’m excited to find out.
• Apocryphon 4y ago
  Eh, as I said last time we had a Neuromancer adaptation news story, Dune was said to be unfilmable for years until Villeneuve went and did it and made it seem both natural and almost a little bit conventional. We're in a golden age of IP right now, and now that superheroes are getting a bit tired, perhaps it's time for classic sci-fi adaptations to shine. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33886166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33886166
  • deepzn 4y ago
    He did it, but still would have a preferred a Dune TV show, especially after the success of GoT, and the streaming wars. The money was there. Characters played by Jason Momoa, Oscar Issac etc only got a little bit of screen time. And all those cool characters would have been amazing to watch over a few seasons.
    • MikusR 4y ago
      There is both a Dune TV series and Children of Dune TV series. Both much better than the Villeneuve movie.
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      I totally agree, and hopefully it'll inspire the creation of Dune miniseries and shows, since there's ample precedence there.
      • senko 4y ago
        https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/ was actually quite good (as was the followup Children of Dune).
    • idontpost 4y ago
    • christkv 4y ago
      Checkout the old syfy channels mini series.
    • sanedigital 4y ago
      Not sure I need to spoiler alert a book that came out over 50 years ago, but Momoa should be back in Part 3.
      • deepzn 4y ago
        Ohhh, snap, I wish I'd stopped at spoiler alert..... :(((( haha it's all good. I'd been meaning to read those for a while, but...alas never did.
      • Krasnol 4y ago
        I doubt there will be a part 3. I assume Villeneuve got the deal safe for two parts but the numbers don't justify a part 3. Maybe a TV show could raise more awareness.
        • mercutio2 4y ago
          Quite the contrary. They didn't green light part 2 until they saw the numbers for part 1, and they were excellent. That doesn't mean they'll go all the way to God Emperor, but I don't think we know for sure they won't.
          • MikusR 4y ago
            Movie that cost 165 million having a 100 million us box office surely looks like good numbers.
          • Krasnol 4y ago
            Well yeah it was officially green lit in October but I doubt he'd have even started if they hadn't promised him something along the lines. The ending is terrible at this point. How would that look on Master Villeneuve's vita? I also doubt they'll go for 3 because all following books don't have that kind of action flick / visual extravaganza potential and this is what Villeneuve can do. Instead there is a lot of talk and this is what Villeneuve can't do. It'll still be the same ol' Dune with a lot of chamber play. I doubt he's even seriously interested in that.
  • windowshopping 4y ago
    As someone who didn't read the book, the dune adaptation felt pretty hollow. A lot of visual splendor, but a very thin story with very empty characters. Extremely shallow interactions.
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      I don't disagree. As I mention in my earlier comment, the point is that what was once considered unfilmable has now actually gotten adaptations, even if the adaptations might not be good. And what might be attempted once might receive adaptations again, until someone gets it right.
      • larrik 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure "unfilmable" means "any adaptions wouldn't be good".
        • Apocryphon 4y ago
          I always interpreted it as "unable to be adapted faithfully." For instance, in my earlier post I mentioned the live-action Ghost in the Shell, which in some parts Hollywood almost-mechanically adapted to be shot by shot identical to the original animated film, while completely missing the point with the racebent casting choices and much of the writing. I would count that as a poor adaptation, but not adapted so faithlessly that it has no resemblance to the original work. Then again, Blade Runner is a loose adaptation of PKD's original story, yet does its central themes justice. So I guess "unflimable" is a relative term. Maybe it could ALSO just mean "no demand or desire to see adapted for film or television." My overall point is that it's a golden age of IP and with the mainstreaming of nerd culture (and the endless demand for content from the streaming studios), all sorts of works that were once considered unfilmable are about to see the light of day.
          • aerovistae 4y ago
            > racebent This is the first time I've encountered this term! What an excellent word.
  • chaostheory 4y ago
    The new Dune is better, but it still fails to capture all the intrigue, conspiracy, and politics that would be better captured by a TV series.
  • de_keyboard 4y ago
    Dune was enjoyable and all but HE SKIPPED THE DINNER SCENE arguably one of the most important bits!
    • mholm 4y ago
      I'm not sure there's a director in the world who could have done the dinner scene justice. Some things just can't bridge mediums.
  • Krasnol 4y ago
    > Dune was said to be unfilmable for years until Villeneuve went and did I always assumed this argument goes for the whole of the original Dune universe. The first book is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. The further on you go with them, the more problematic it becomes as it is mainly dialogue and not much is really happening. Neuromancer is far more challenging than the first books of Dune and I doubt from what Villeneuve did to the first book that he'd be capable of going even half way without gutting it of all the really interesting parts. This one felt pretty shallow already. The effects were fine though.
    • Apocryphon 4y ago
      > Neuromancer is far more challenging than the first books of Dune. How so? I'd expect that with both reality turning more and more cyberpunk, and the revived interest in the retrofuturistic '80s-early '90s form of the genre with Cyberpunk 2077 and its Netflix anime adaptation, audiences are primed for this sort of thing.
      • Krasnol 4y ago
        What you are talking about is the visual experience. In my opinion, this will be mostly a problem BECAUSE the visuals have been there already. All of those movies following Blade Runner did their part of the Neuromancer-Cyberpunk thing. However I consider the hardest part being the emotional depth of the characters which get their unique taste through the authors way to describe them. The Burroughesque touch and the unknowns is what makes Gibsons early works truly special (it gets easier with his latests works as we can see with the current adaptation of Peripheral). The show needs a true artists touch. It doesn't have to be what Gibson did but it should be something special, not mainstream. Dune on the other hand is a straight forward dynasty drama at the beginning and only later escalates into a philosophical exercise later on before it explodes into something completely different towards the end (of the original books). The beginning has been done already in Game of Thrones for example and is pretty much doable. Neuromancer is harder but I think Apple can pull this off because I feel this brave approach from them. A feeling I had with Netflix at the beginning.
      • LarryMullins 4y ago
  • Mistletoe 4y ago
    Unfilmable, but the David Lynch version is amazing? The new one was enjoyable but I honestly prefer the old one.
  • LarryMullins 4y ago
    The Spicediver edit of Lynch's Dune proved to me that Dune is filmable. I think it remains the best adaptation of Dune. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHQA_0d9Mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHQA_0d9Mo
  • selfmodruntime 4y ago
    He didn't make it seem natural, he made it seem neutral. I have no idea why, but he left out key information and incredibly important interpersonal scenes and focused instead on big army scenes.
• deleted 4y ago
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• duskwuff 4y ago
  > IIRC Gibson stated that Neuromancer is basically "un-movieable". Honestly, I'd have to disagree. As far as novels go, it's actually fairly amenable to a film or TV adaptation -- the storyline is linear and follows a single main character with clear motivations, and the storytelling doesn't rely too heavily on internal monologue or implicit knowledge. It's perhaps a little too dense for a feature film, but as a TV series it'd be perfectly fine. Some of the technical aspects of the story might make it more difficult to adapt -- like the scenes set in orbit, or in cyberspace -- but that's no longer the insurmountable obstacle it used to be. The Expanse had no problem realistically depicting scenes set in space, for example.
  • blincoln 4y ago
    I think it may not be that straightforward. I was part of a group interview with Gibson years ago, and I didn't fully appreciate one of the things he said at the time until years later. It was something about how everyone who loves a written story gets a very specific, vivid, custom image in their head of what it would be like to see it on screen. It can be so powerful that it's easy to forget that different people can come away with very different versions, based on what elements of the story resonated with them. He said this is why movie versions of beloved stories often get massive negative reactions. For example, the Neuromancer in my head is a very gritty, 80s angular dark geometry highlighted in neon, Blade-Runner-esque film. It certainly doesn't have any comic relief in it. Most people I've talked to seem to have at least a vaguely similar vision. I always thought it was a little weird that nearly every adaptation of his work was fairly light-hearted, even self-parodying in places. "Gibson must have the worst luck at being paired with screenwriters" was how I thought of it. The Neuromancer computer game, the film version of Johnny Mnemonic, his X-Files episodes, they all try to lighten things up. A few years after his comment, I went back and re-read Neuromancer and Burning Chrome and realized the intended comic relief was there all along. The "Aryan reggae band". The space station full of Rastafarians (the implication being they're so high they're in outer space). The dolphin with a SQUID. Case running out of tanning lotion. etc. etc. There are probably roughly just as many people that focus on that aspect of his work as the "looks like Blade Runner in my head" crowd. The people making this version can onlt make one version, so which do they go with? I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, but I expect the result will be very polarizing.
• crucialfelix 4y ago
  The Peripheral is also super busy, every sentence dense with information and revealing cultural context. But it does read as filmable. The adaption on Prime is worth watching, but it's a rewrite. None of the language or density of expression is there. They probably made it more comprehensible and I won't criticize that. But the books were invigorating and mind blowing.